APB: Reloaded Celebrates Anniversary With Free Cash Shop Items

GamersFirst pulled off a seemingly impossible feat: they took hold of a $100 million dollar game that had died and revived it and its design team on a modest budget with a big goal. In a sort of round two of Rocky versus Apollo, G1 managed to come out on top with the success of APB: Reloaded and they're celebrating the one year anniversary since the game's official re-launch, with free cash shop gear.

When you log-in with your character you'll find two new mail messages from the APB team. What are these messages? Items, my good friends...items. They contain a brand new celebration emote and a free cigar, so you can smoke a stogie with your friends about the game's one-year anniversary.

It's kind of an amazing feat because many journalists and game reviewers railed on the game when it first launched under the Realtime World and EA label. I gave it a pretty low score because a lot of the game just didn't work, especially the driving. G1 and the Reloaded Productions team managed to fix a lot of what was broken (including the shoddy driving mechanics, which were replaced with some of the best vehicle physics in an open-world game), and eventually turned APB into APB: Reloaded, which has had a fairly successful tenure thus far.

Rahul Sandil, Chief Marketing Officer for Reloaded Games commented in the press release about the game's success, saying...

“With over 3 million downloads delivered, APB has established itself as one of the hottest game franchises in the online games industry. Over the next few days we will be making other exciting announcements about the expansion of the APB Franchise, so stay tuned”

Despite giving the original game a poor review score, I was always hoping and championing for the game to end up in the right hands, as it offers an avenue of MMO gaming that doesn't exist under any other label in the gaming industry. Also, a healthy dose of success means more imitators and clones, and this is a good thing as it keeps the industry pushing for bigger and better ideas, which is always a great thing.

You can grab a digital copy of APB: Reloaded right now, for free, either from the official website or from Steam. During the anniversary celebration you can also grab a free cigar and emote right now.